About Me

Monday, 1 February 2016

Thinking Caps

The National
Hurricane Center has advised me that the season begins on 1st June and I should
be prepared. Meanwhile the debate goes
on about weather, climate, the wind and rain and most of all where to book for
the summer holiday, if any.

Also, there
have been the reminders that 2016 is two hundred years after The Year Without
Summer (Wikipedia). This is something I
knew long before Wiki' was but a fantasy idea in the minds of nerds with
nothing better to do.

It arose from
the massive eruption of Mount Tambora in what is now Indonesia that ejected so
much ash and particle content into the sky that across the world weather
conditions suffered radical change and extreme events occurred.

The scale of
the human and economic damage in a world where agriculture was all was huge and
the various consequences really did change nations, societies, thinking and
ideas about government and who should rule and how.

At the moment
it is evident that across the world most rulers are conducting business on a
hand to mouth basis and in those with corruption endemic, hand to hand. Short term thinking dominates and those who
do want to think ahead are either ignored or got rid of.

A "big
one" does not have to be a volcano or even a geo-physical event. We humans have a talent for causing disasters
when there is no need and no real purpose to it. Also, we are told there are other things more
important.

For example in
the row about in or out of Europe, a major issue is said to be the employment
rules affecting footballers. Forget finance, trade, economics, the whole
range of social issues, what matters is whether Doncaster Rovers can deal with
player contracts.

It was thought
that a post on the major challenges of our time might be useful, but the list
was getting long and very complicated, so it was decided to skip it, after all
there is football on the box.